CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

In Defiance of Peru’s Colonial Legacy, Cholas Reclaim Identity

Uno soldado Inca ataca uno conquistador español. Image Source: Scarton (talk · contribs) – Detalle de la pintura de Juan Bravo sobre la “historia de Qosqo” para la municipalidad de Cusco – CC BY-SA 3.0

Scholar Olga Rodriguez-Ulloa argues that dominant narratives in Peruvian academia have made it difficult to think of subversives as peers.

Olga Rodriguez-Ulloa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, American Studies, and the Latino Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington. She is the author of Sadistic Cholas: Transfeminist Provocations in Contemporary Peru (University of Texas Press, 2026). Chola is a racial slur that has been reclaimed by revolutionary collectives in resistance to political power. Her work privileges the voices of cholas and “seeks to position [their] overlooked anti-colonial aesthetics.” Rodriguez-Ulloa has been featured in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, e-flux, and Ill Will. In this exclusive interview, Rodriguez-Ulloa discusses her main arguments, source material, and how the progressive left can interrogate the intersectionality of class and identity.

Daniel Falcone: What do you argue in Sadistic Cholas and how did you structure your book?

Olga Rodriguez-Ulloa: While tracing the long durée of cholas’ survivance, from colonial times to the present, the book focuses on contemporary visual arts, literature, activism, and music that reappropriate and embrace the racial slur to redefine it as a source of political potency. To be called “chola” in public settings was once a feared occurrence, a humiliating experience. Like other racial terminologies, the term is relational, shaped by social class, formal education, speech, and other social markers.

In recent years, collectives (colectivas) and individuals, myself included, have finally dared to name ourselves as cholas, unveiling the racial and misogynist violence of the country while affirming our bodies, sexual pleasures, and political desires. The book is structured through a series of provocations in which I contextualize my interpretation of these oeuvres within histories of colonialism, U.S. imperialism, anti-Indigeneity, and anti-Blackness; bridging hemispheric dialogues that are, I believe, much needed in Latin American Studies, Latine Studies, and American Studies.

Daniel Falcone: Can you describe the term “cholas” for the readers? What is the historical significance of this term and how was the term politicized, especially as it relates to your work?

Olga Rodriguez-Ulloa: According to one of the most important colonial chroniclers, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, the masculine form “cholo” was an insult Spaniards used against the progeny of mulattoes and........

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